Voices From Cold River

Mariah told her mother, yes, she was going to bathe in the river. An emphatic, even defiant yes for today was the last day of her childhood. No more bowing to Mother’s limits. She would demonstrate her independence by plunging into the clear waters of Cold River free and unashamed. Mariah Brandon marched down the dusty path toward the riverbank carrying two large towels. Despite her mother’s shouted warnings about the perils of breaching boundaries, Mariah walked on, head up, her black tresses falling loose over her shoulders. “What if somebody sees you swimming like one of the Rhine maidens?” Sarah called out sharply. “Life is no opera, Mariah,” she harped on with Wagnerian fury, sure her daughter was determined to breach all decorum and swim naked as a nymph. For the past few months anger and frustration had colored her tone, but deeper currents of fear occasionally surfaced also. What would become of this female Icarus Sarah had brought into the world? Sarah feared that Mariah was leaving the nest and flying too close to the sun of Victorian convention. The two-year battle between mother and daughter began in earnest when Mariah completed her formal schooling with graduation from eighth grade. A love of books, encouraged by her mother, had helped her to fly over New Hampshire’s mountains to the world beyond. Now her mother wanted her to return to the cage of domestic duty, but the door was ajar and Sarah’s beautiful black-crowned bird was about to escape. “If somebody sees you, we’ll never live it down. It just isn’t done.” Sarah’s voice trailed off in resignation. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Mariah to herself. School was in session and it was harvest time. Chances were slim of encountering anyone at the swimming hole, but it was just that chance that made the adventure all the more alluring. Enough of worrying what others think; enough of knowing my place. Mariah was raised on the same stern lessons that had directed generations of New Englanders along the paths of righteousness of their Puritan forebears. In Adam’s fallen world people were consigned to their roles. Some were masters; others were slaves. Men tended the fields; women tended the kitchen. Although they believed Christ’s blood was spilled for all, the blood of some of His children ran blue, and blue bloods had a special place in the eternal order of things; their rewards were visible during their lifetimes. Red-blooded commoners who were faithful in their menial roles on earth would receive their treasures in heaven. Children learned from an early age that there was a predestined purpose and a place for all of us on earth. True happiness came to those who followed God’s will, not your own. Mariah had heard it all at home, at school, at church, but all the pressure to conform had turned the combustible coal of her fiery will into the hardness of diamond. “You are not to go upstream!” Sarah warned. Mariah disappeared into the bushy cover of the path along the river, adamant that she would swim in the forbidden place reserved for older boys, a mysterious cascade well upstream from the glacial pothole where children and girls swam. All morning before Mariah’s abrupt departure Sarah had vented her steam in the kitchen with four recipes going simultaneously, two assigned to Mariah. The two younger siblings, Florence and Little Moze, were doing their barnyard chores. Freddy, the elder son, had gone to the North Sandwich Store on errands. Bread dough was warming on the stove shelf, pushing up the damp cloths only to be punched down for their second rising; apples coated in cinnamon and sugar stood in a mound awaiting their crust. “This is the last chance to have my say, so you’re going to have to hear it. I’m still your mother and you’re under my roof.” Sarah had declared a mother’s privilege to have her say as she punched the bread dough down with particular vehemence. “A woman who fails to know her place—especially a poor one with nothing to fall back on—will bring a curse down on herself that may haunt her for the rest of her life.” “Know my place. So this is my place? The kitchen?” “Well, yes, that, too, the kitchen is a woman’s place, but I mean the Notch, on a farm. Your father and I, and most of our neighbors, we go back five, six generations in this place, and all farmers. This is your home, the place you’ve always loved.” “But that’s not all, is it, Mother? To ‘place’, I mean.” Mariah waved a wooden spoon like a weapon. “ ‘Place’ is also my station in society, as they say, and you think I’m being uppity because I don’t want to be a cow-milking farmhand wife. That’s it, too, isn’t it?” A deadly silence separated them until Mariah whacked down the wooden spoon and let the flour fly. At the table where she was working, a pound cake and a bread pudding loaded with raisins rested in their greased tins amongst flour and utensils. “These are ready for the oven. There. I’m done,” she declared. She took the lavender-scented soap her brother Freddy had brought from uptown, found two towels, and headed for the door. The rich sensuality of the French milled soap cleansed Mariah’s nostrils of the domestic scents of home cooking. “Where did that come from?” asked Sarah, pushing back errant strands of strawberry blond hair. Twelve-year-old Freddy, who was eavesdropping on the confrontation at the open front door answered. “It came from Will. I saw him up at Taylor’s. He asked me to deliver it directly to Mariah.” “So the groom wants his bride to be perfumed for the special day, does he?” snarled Sarah. “Freddy, haven’t you got chores to do?” expecting response without reply. Freddy knew this was one of those times to comply without whining or hesitating. When Mariah arrived at the pothole, she listened for voices; smiling when she detected only the call of birds and the rustling of leaves. The only voices she heard were the soft voices of the two branches of the river as they met in a frolicking swirl that had carved out a basin in the solid granite. Although she expected solitude even upstream, she moved stealthily under cover of the thick brush along the bank until she got to the upstream pool where, she had heard, there was a wonderful granite slide, smoothed by eons of water and sand. If only she would dare try it! But as she broke through thick hemlock boughs, she heard male voices. Farm boys her age or slightly older had apparently using their lunch break from the fields for a final swim of the season. She ducked back behind the branches and tried to calm her racing heart. The young men’s hands and faces were brown from a long season of plowing and haying. Sinewy, slippery white arms wrestled in the water with an animal frenzy. Their laughter could not hide the competitive play of dawning manhood. Who could dive deeper or punch harder? Eventually the boys drew themselves up on the warm, smooth rocks in full sun, panting and growing serious as they talked about girls. Mariah could only make out occasional words—she heard some names, including her own. She was tempted to slip into the water and move closer behind some glacial boulders, but she knew she would be discovered. She strained to hear, but the splash of the water down the rocky slide and the buzz of concupiscent insects screaming in the warm sun censored their words. As they stood to dress, she watched intently. Blood rushed to her head, and she thought of Will whose fine body she longed to see uncovered. One more day. In only a few minutes the boys were gone and the cascading north branch of Cold River was hers alone. She left her clothes hidden under branches and slipped into the cold water. It was crystalline with sunlight reflected from mica on the sandy bottom. As she swam, she thought of Longfellow’s maiden “with the meek brown eyes.” Mariah’s eyes, bl